


many names in history

by limehoneytea



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Character Study, Excessive use of italics, Henry-centric, Inspired by Poetry, Love Letters, M/M, Purple Prose, Queer History, Stream of Consciousness, Yearning, kind of, legacy, they make HISTORY y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25291861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limehoneytea/pseuds/limehoneytea
Summary: One day, Alexander Claremont-Diaz and Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor will just be names in the spiraling scrolls of history. But today, it is only the two of them, Alex and Henry, and he is baring his heart in the first way he learned how: secrets and love letters and yearning in the dark.(𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴.)
Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor
Comments: 25
Kudos: 101





	many names in history

**Author's Note:**

> I freaked out about love letters, dissected why I loved rwrb as a novel so much (something about historical impact is so mMMMmmm) and dumped all of those feelings onto Henry. Enjoy! 
> 
> the title and part of the summary are from Richard Siken's Little Beast! Every other work quoted has the author cited or is written by Casey McQuiston. Most of the quotes are quoted in the books as well— the only ones that aren't are Siken and Keats which I added in because I'm gay and a sap.

Henry is fifteen years old, a dusty copy of _The Complete Works of John Keats_ splayed across his lap. He is reading a love letter, pale finger trailing across the yellowed pages. 

Nearly two hundred years prior, John Keats writes to his lover: _I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion— I have shuddered at it, I shudder no more. I could be martyred for my religion. Love is my religion and I could die for that. I could die for you._

Religion, Henry thinks. A love like faith, like praying. A love worth dying for. 

He pictures deft hands cradling his ink-stained ones, pictures leaning his head against strong shoulders after a long day. He imagines a voice, throaty and deep but soft and gentle, lifting the tension off his shoulders with every sound. 

He knows what these fantasies mean, knows how this is not how it is supposed to be. He is a prince; he does not get to keep his faceless figure, his figurative love. He drowns out these thoughts with the whispered reassurances of the imagined voice and lets it lull him to sleep, Keats still clutches in hand. 

Henry is eighteen years old and he doesn’t dare imagine anymore. He is a royal, and royals don’t dream. 

Soon, Philip is going to go off to the military, the unofficial mandate for royal men, and Henry is expected to follow in his footsteps. He knows, objectively, that military service does not mean war and combat, especially for a royal, but he can’t imagine fighting. He is not made for it. 

Henry is all soft bones and rolling tongues, carved of wood rather than the everlasting marble of the rest of his family. He does not have something to fight for, not with his father gone, and his mother distant, and Philip and Bea both slipping away from him in different ways. 

(An image: a boy surrounded by the shining lights of the Olympics stadium, soft brown curls and dimples. He is so bright, blinding even, and Henry lets himself cling to bitterness over every other emotion he wants to feel. A flash: an imagined future, the boy and his curls and dimples. _Something worth fighting for_. _Something worth fighting for._ _Something worth—_

Later, he texts one of Philip’s uni friends and tries not to imagine a different set of hands on him. It’s just… physical attraction, he tells himself, no emotions attached. If nothing else, he is at least allowed to have this.)

He still reads love letters, still lets the love of two strangers from a distant time fill a void somewhere deep within him he cannot fill himself. He is not allowed love but history has already happened, after all, and there is no shame in its study.

Four hundred and eighty years prior, Michelangelo writes _: I know well that, at this hour, I could as easily forget your name as the food by which I live; nay, it were easier to forget the food, which only nourishes my body miserably, than your name, which nourishes both body and soul, filling the one and the other with such sweetness that neither weariness nor fear of death is felt by me while memory preserves you to my mind. Think, if the eyes could also enjoy their portion, in what condition I should find myself._

He pictures home, not the polished museum rooms of Kensington, but someplace lived and loved in. He imagines worn furniture and sweaters tossed over a chair. 

An image: two figures intertwined on the sofa fondly reminiscing over shared memories, the television ignored in the background. They are smiling softly, sleepily drawing circles into each other’s skin. 

He shakes his head. Home is not meant for people like him, he thinks.

Half a decade later, he sends Michelangelo's words to his own lover. He has one now, a lover, _something worth fighting for_. 

( _Love is my religion_ , he remembers, _and I could die for that. I could die for you_. For the first time, he can find himself agreeing to the sentiment.

_Thank you_ , he writes Alex, quoting Jean Cocteau’s words to Jean Marais eighty years prior, another love letter between figures long-dead he is so fond of, _from the bottom of my heart for having saved me. I was drowning and you threw yourself into the water without hesitation, without a backward look.)_

He is twenty-two and the world is crueler than he can bear to think about but there is light. Light and hope and things he hadn’t thought he could even dream of. The softest parts of him, the parts he doesn’t dare show the world are laid out in hidden emails burrowed in insecure servers, and he doesn’t know what to think of it. Soon, these words will be public record, become etched in history like the works they’ve quoted. 

(Henry remembers another poem, a few stray lines of a larger work that has always stuck with him. _History_ , he remembers, _is a little man in a brown suit trying to define a room he is outside of. I know history, there are many names in history, but none of them are ours._ He does not know where he got his hands on Richard Siken’s work but remembers Bea and her shaking hands and hopeful eyes a few weeks after he poured his heart out at her feet. He remembers the readings she did: the information pamphlets, the young adult novels, the poetry, and he smiles.)

One day, Alexander Claremont-Diaz and Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor will just be names in the spiraling scrolls of history. But today, it is only the two of them, Alex and Henry, and he is baring his heart in the first way he learned how: secrets and love letters and yearning in the dark.

The emails get leaked. There is a photograph too, but it is the emails Henry mourns: _bad metaphors about maps/ should I tell you/ miss you like a home/_ _give yourself away sometimes, sweetheart, there’s so much of you._

But then, another part of their emails, Alex’s words, emerges from the echoes, and he can almost hear it. _You, me, and history, remember?_

Henry remembers. He remembers how he felt the first time he read words of love from centuries ago, history in rose-colored glasses, emotions that transcend lifetimes. 

He thinks of boys like him centuries later, reading his and Alex’s words to either other, finding the same solace in _for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all,_ and, _you'd be marked with the names of saints like all the old maps. I get the nomenclature now- saints' names belong to miracles_ , as Henry did in words from his own history. 

“If there’s any legacy for me on this bloody earth, I want it to be true,” he says, and he does. He mourns the emails like a lung but he knows that if there is any mark he wants to leave on history, he wants it to be this: love, the pure feeling, transcending through centuries.

“What are we even _defending_ here, Philip?” he screams later. “What kind of legacy? What kind of _family_ , that says, we’ll take the murder, we’ll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we’ll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you’re a bloody poof? That’s beyond our sense of decorum! I’ve bloody well _had it_ ,” and he feels a weight being lifted from his chest.

His grandmother is shut up from whatever grand coverup she was planning by the crowds. He sees them, the _Free Henry_ signs, the flags, the bright smiles and feels a wave of pure emotion wash over him.

_This_ is his legacy. Not being a stuffy royal in neat pressed suits with a cardboard personality. _Love_ is his legacy, and it might be the best of them yet. 

Jeffrey Richards gets investigated for espionage and sabotage, Ellen Claremont wins the election and Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor buys a brownstone in Brooklyn.

There it is: home. Two figures, Henry and Alex, lounging on the couch, Bake-Off playing in the background. Hands intertwined, legs tangled, Henry leaning his head against Alex’s shoulder listening to him talk about his day.

They have their history, they have a legacy, they've etched their names among the great lovers of old. But here, in the midst of the busy city, in the careful quiet of the brownstone, they are just two.

An image: a boy with brown curls and soft dimples. He is so bright, blinding even, and Henry lets himself hold him, close his eyes, and smile. 

He gets to have this. _This_ is his future. 

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a while since I've posted one of my rambling semi-poetry character study fics. okay, it's actually been a while since I've finished ANY fic in general. I think I started about a half dozen through quarantine but never ended up finishing any of them (the curse of having TOO much time, I guess) so I thought I would exercise the writing muscle with one of my favorite characters!
> 
> I actually haven't written anything for this fandom before this but I /have/ read almost every rwrb fic ao3 has to offer so I think I did okay? leave a comment letting me know what you think please, I would really appreciate it!


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